According to Bartlett, the approval granted by the Department of Transportation for 155 round-trip flights per week to American Airlines, Frontier, jetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest, and Sun Country airlines will ensure that a critical mass is established to drive more airline traffic to the Caribbean. All the flights are expected to begin in the fall.
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Under the arrangement agreed in February, each country will have the opportunity to operate up to 20 daily roundtrip flights between the United States and Havana, as well as the opportunity to operate up to 10 daily roundtrip flights between the United States and each of Cuba’s nine other global airports.
Approval is still required by the Cuban government, but the carriers say they plan to start selling tickets in the next few weeks while they wait for signoffs from Cuba.
Initially, the new flights will depart from five cities – Miami and Fort Lauderdale in Florida, Chicago, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. If you’re a frequent traveler, you can tell that most of these airlines are in the budget category, so prepare for some decently priced flights.
As part of the Obama Administration’s overall effort to normalize relations, six US airlines are now cleared for takeoff to Cuba, with the flights coming from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Philadelphia and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Charter flights between the United States and Cuba will continue once the direct commercial services are resumed. “Today, we are delivering on his promise by re-launching scheduled air service to Cuba”.
“Last year, President Obama announced that it was time to “begin a new journey” with the Cuban people”, said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
The Cuban cities selected are Camagüey, Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguín, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba. US transportation officials said they had yet to make a decision on flights to the Cuban capital because interest from airlines was much higher for those routes and there were competing claims.
Which airlines will be making the daily voyages to Cuba? Almost 160,000 US leisure travelers flew to Cuba previous year, along with hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans visiting family.
The United States and Cuba spent decades as adversaries, between the time of Castro’s revolution in 1959 and a year ago, when leaders of both countries took a series of steps to redevelop a friendlier political relationship.
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Prices for the charter flights about approximately $500.
